He was trying to get up nerve enough to make a second attempt when a gentle voice from somewhere around his left collarbone spoke.
“Excuse me. I believe I heard you say you’re Professor Shandy?”
The speaker was a small woman of forty or so. Shandy’s first reaction was that she seemed extremely well put together. Her pale blue coat sat on her compact figure as though it enjoyed being there. Her light blue hat showed just the right amount of fair, curling hair and made an agreeable frame for a peach-petal complexion. Her eyes were hidden behind dark glasses, but it stood to reason they would match her costume. Those features which he could see were in delicate harmony with the rounded oval of her face. He felt better for being able to look at her.
“I am,” he said gratefully. “I’m supposed to be meeting a relative by marriage of the former Jemmy Ames. Dare I hope that you are she?”
“I’m Helen Marsh. I thought Professor Ames was coming. I expected to recognize him from pictures Jemmy showed me.” She held out a small hand.
“You’ve missed Ames by about ten minutes,” Shandy told her. “There was a mix-up in scheduling and his plane left before yours got in. We were in such a state of confusion that I forgot to ask him your name. Mine is Peter Shandy.”
“Oh yes, the turnip man.” Miss Marsh flushed most becomingly. “I’m sorry. Jemmy has told me so much about you and her father and the giant turnip—”
“Actually it’s a rutabaga, Brassica napobrassica, as opposed to the—er—common turnip, or Brassica rapa. The difference is rather interesting if you—er—happen to be interested in that sort of thing.”
“I’m sure it is. Have you any idea where I’m supposed to pick up my luggage?”
“This way, I believe.”
Shandy started down the apparently endless strip of light brown terrazzo, feeling exhausted and futile. Strangely, Helen Marsh seemed to sense his mood.
“I do hope you’re going to tell me about the Brassicae.”
He stopped in his tracks. “Did you say Brassicae?”
“Oh, dear, should it be Brassicidiae or something? I’m so stupid about botanical names.”
“My dear madam, I was merely overwhelmed with joy at hearing a simple Latin noun pluralized correctly. It was like seeing a familiar face in a foreign land. You—er—wouldn’t care for a bite of lunch, or a drink or something?”
“They served lunch on the plane, such as it was, but I wouldn’t say no to a small glass of sherry, unless you’re just being polite.”
“There are those who will tell you I’m never polite. We have a longish drive ahead of us, and probably at least half an hour’s wait before they finish jumping up and down on your suitcases. I thought we might spend the interval to better advantage in this—er—grotto than standing around the luggage counter.”
“Grotto is a lovely word.” Miss Marsh took off her sunglasses, confirming Shandy’s hypothesis that her eyes would turn out to be a particularly attractive shade of blue, and accompanied him into the murky recesses with every appearance of pleasurable anticipation. A waitress loomed out of the smoky black-and-red like one of Persephone’s handmaidens.
“You did say sherry?” he asked his guest. “Dry or—er—otherwise?”
“Amontillado, if they have it.”
“Amontillado by all means. Two, please, miss. I suppose everybody drinks sherry in California.”
“No, pink Chablis.”
“Is that why you decided to come back East?”
“That among other things. I never adjusted. I can’t do yoga and I blush terribly at the movies, and I think too much citrus fruit acidifies the system. At least something soured mine.”
She ate five kernels of stale popcorn as Shandy counted them in silence, then laughed. She had a clear, small, gurgling laugh that went well with her smile.
“Did Jemmy tell you why I got fired?”
“I didn’t talk with Jemmy myself. Tim only said you’re a librarian, which was pleasant news to me, I may say. Er—why did you get fired?”
“The president of the college where I was working brought me in a manuscript and asked if I thought the university press ought to publish it. I sent it back with a note saying I’d found the work a lot of pompous nonsense, abominably written. It turned out he was the author. We had what might be called a confrontation scene, after which he said, ‘Perhaps you may now wish to alter your opinion?’ So I picked up the note and wrote, ‘The author is an illiterate windbag,’ and that’s why I had to skip town.”
They both laughed and drank their sherry in a pleasant glow of companionship.
Then Shandy said, “President Svenson is a remarkably intelligent man. I hope you won’t make the mistake of—er—not thinking so.”
“Am I likely to?”
“Probably not, but people have. The results are usually disastrous and sometimes fatal. Would you care for more sherry?”
“No, I think they must have got me unloaded by now.”
She adjusted her scarf and picked up her gloves. Shandy paid the check and added a tip that would have brought a scolding from Ben Cadwall. He’d enjoyed standing Helen Marsh a drink. He even enjoyed shepherding her back along the terrazzo to where two matching blue suitcases were standing like orphans in the storm.
“Goodness, they were prompt,” she said. “No, please, let me take one.”
“Nonsense.”
Shandy picked up both the bags, managing not to stagger. He was fully aware that he was showing off, and that such behavior was silly in a man of his age. Perhaps he might entertain Miss Marsh at a later time by swinging from tree to tree in his leopard skin. He pondered the notion and found it not wholly without merit.
Chapter 9
“WELL HAVE TO WALK THE last bit,” Shandy apologized. “Cars can’t get up the Crescent during the—er—revels.”
Helen Marsh knew all about the Grand Illumination. Jemmy had given her the highlights back in California, and Shandy had perforce filled in the blanks on their drive back, including as much about Jemima’s alleged fatal accident as the neighbors knew. He thought it would be injudicious to tell her the truth.
He did confess his own part in precipitating the tragedy. To his unutterable relief, she laughed almost as heartily as Tim had done, though in a more seemly manner, and said she’d probably have done the same, if she’d been clever enough to think of it. By the time he opened the trunk to fish out her luggage, Shandy was in better spirits than he would have thought possible.
“Now, you’re not going to carry both those heavy cases up that great, steep hill,” she insisted, reaching for a handle.
“My dear lady, I have no intention of carrying either one, nor shall you. Here, Hanson!”
Shandy beckoned to a sophomore student who was lounging about the parking lot across the way. “Would you care to earn a surreptitious stipend?”
“If that means money, sure.”
The strapping youth picked up the bags like a couple of pretzels, and was halfway up the hill before the others got fairly started.
“We have an unwritten law here at Balaclava,” the professor explained. “Never do anything for yourself that you can wheedle a student into doing for you.”
“How much is this particular wheedle going to cost?” asked Miss Marsh, opening her handbag.
“You must allow me, please. I don’t get to play the gay gallant very often. Gay in the—er—formerly accepted sense, that is.”
She laughed again, even more delightfully than before. “I can’t imagine why not, when you do it so well. You’ve been awfully kind, Professor Shandy.”
“Er—my given name is Peter.”
“It suits you.”
“Do you think so? Er—Helen has always been a favorite name of mine.” He hadn’t realized it until just then, however.
“Why?” she teased. “Did you have a Helen for your childhood sweetheart?”
“No, actually she was a Guernsey—” Shandy’s voice died.
&
nbsp; The student, making what was perhaps a natural mistake, had dumped the suitcases on the short walk in front of the brick house, and was studying the porch with gleeful interest. A few steps more, and Shandy could see why.
He had quite forgotten the plastic Santa Claus. One of the decorators’ more perverted whimsies had been a life-size articulated mannequin of Old Saint Nick. The last time Shandy had seen the thing, on his way to catch the Singapore Susie, it had been standing beside the front door, as though about to climb up and feed the reindeer on the roof. Now the thing was back. Its back was turned to the passer-by, its hands were engaged at the front of the body, its red flannel trousers were down around its boot tops, and across the plastic buttocks somebody had printed with a Magic Marker: “Santa Claus is a dirty old man.”
“Helen, I do apologize;” he said stiffly. “Another of my—er—aesthetic sins has come back to haunt me. Hanson, would you happen to know anything about this?”
The student shrugged. Shandy pulled up the dummy’s trousers and laid it on the porch floor.
“I’ll put this abomination in the cellar as soon as we’ve got you settled, Helen. No doubt the students have been carting it all over the campus ever since I left. I should have known better than to have it around in the first place. Hanson, Miss Marsh is a relative of the Ameses and will be staying in their house.”
“Oh. Hey, Professor, what happened to Mrs. Ames?”
“She is presumed to have fallen and fractured her skull while—er—checking on my Christmas trimmings while I was away on holiday. Chief Ottermole made that deduction from the available evidence, just as I deduce from that silly grin on your face that you know perfectly well who’s been horsing around with my Santa Claus but don’t intend to tell me.”
Red-faced, Hanson picked up the bags. “Aw, you know how it is. The stiffs expect us guys to be doing crazy stuff all the time. It’s part of the act. Somebody got the bright idea of kidnaping Santa Claus and holding him for ransom, but you weren’t around so the gag fell kind of flat.”
“And where has the dummy been all this time?”
“Oh, around.”
“Last seen in the company of Till Eulenspiegel, I presume?”
“Who’s she?”
Shandy sighed and drew a bill from his wallet. “Thank you, Hanson. We’ll—er—take it from here.”
“Okay, Professor. Enjoy your stay, Miss Marsh.”
The student leaped off down the hill. Shandy fished out the bunch of keys that Timothy Ames, for a wonder, had remembered to leave with him.
“You’d better brace yourself for a shock, Helen. Jemima liked to think she had a soul above housekeeping.”
“Jemmy warned me what to expect.”
As they got inside she added with a brave little laugh, “My goodness, it was all true, wasn’t it?”
“All and then some,” said Shandy. “Wait till you see the kitchen. Look, Helen, if it’s too awful, I have a reasonably comfortable guest room ready and waiting.”
“Thank you, Peter. I’ll remember that. However, I did come to house-sit this place, so I expect I ought to grit my teeth and give it a try. May I come over and borrow mops and things if I need them?”
“Anything you like. And—er—the college runs an excellent faculty dining room. Tim and Jemima generally ate there, and so do I. Perhaps you’d give me the pleasure of your company a bit later?”
“The pleasure would be mine, I assure you. When shall I be ready?”
“They serve dinner from half past five to half past seven. We keep farmers’ hours here, you know.”
“Then shall we make it half past six? That ought to give me time to blast a path ’twixt bed and bath. Heavens, I’ve made a rhyme.”
“And a very neat one,” he told her fatuously. “Then I’ll—er—leave you to it.”
With reluctance, he did. She was probably glad to get rid of so inept an escort. What madness had come over him, inviting that agreeable woman to stay in his house after that disgusting episode with the plastic Santa Claus? The insult was a direct reference to the reputation he’d so recently and so undeservedly acquired, he had no doubt about that. If Helen spent a night under his roof, she’d be tarred with the same stick.
Halfway across the Crescent, Shandy stopped dead in his tracks. It was the students who’d kidnaped his dummy, but the faculty who were fabricating the gossip. How in Sam Hill had the story got from one group to the other so fast?
The college community had an unwritten law: What the students don’t know can’t hurt us. While gossip circulated freely around the Crescent and over the hill to the upper reaches where President Svenson and some of the other faculty and administrative people lived, it was understood that nobody ever passed on a word to the undergraduates. Since these young folk thought their seniors a dull lot anyway, the code was seldom broken and then only by gradual osmosis. There had been some unusually fast leakage here, and he wondered who was responsible.
Instead of going into the brick house as he’d intended, Shandy marched up to the Feldsters’ front door and thumped the knocker. Mirelle came. He wasted no time on chitchat.
“Did you see who put that thing on my front porch this afternoon?”
“What thing?” Mirelle emitted a self-conscious titter. “Oh, you mean that thing. Honestly, Peter, I did think that was going a bit too far.”
“So did I. That’s why I’m asking you who’s responsible. And also why you or somebody else didn’t go over and do something about it.”
“If you’ll remember,” said his neighbor nastily, “the last person who tried to do something about those ghastly decorations of yours got herself killed for her pains. Besides, how were we to know this wasn’t just another of your quaint little whimsies?”
Shandy managed to control his temper. “All right, Mirelle. I deserved that. Now, since you’ve got it off your chest, perhaps you can answer my question. Who did it?”
“How am I supposed to know? Do you think I spend all my time gawking out the windows?”
The professor didn’t answer. After a moment, Mirelle admitted, “I don’t know who they were. They had on those knitted elf masks.”
“Males or females?”
“Either or neither. You know as well as I do that all the students and half the faculty wear blue jeans and work boots and those padded, down parkas that make you completely shapeless. It could have been anybody.”
“How did they get the dummy here?”
“Carried it between them, wrapped in a sheet of black plastic. Honestly, the thing looked just like a corpse. That’s what attracted my attention.” Mirelle was voluble now. “I had the impression they were simply going to dump it and run, but then one of them got a better idea.”
“I’m intrigued that you think so.”
“It’s just an expression. I don’t know what’s got into you all of a sudden, Peter. You used to be such a quiet person. Now you’re”—she paused, thought it over, and sidled a step closer—“interesting.”
Mirelle’s lips were slightly parted, her breath coming hard, her eyes hot and moist as a spaniel’s at feeding time. “If I remember anything else,” she murmured, “I might drop over later on and tell you. Jim has a lodge meeting, so I’ll be alone and lonely.”
Good God! This was worse than finding the body. Shandy backed hastily down the steps.
“I—er—expect to be out most of the evening. Thank you for the information, Mirelle.”
“Any time, Peter.”
In a cold sweat, he fled to his own place, only to be confronted by Mrs. Lomax in a state of righteous indignation.
“I must say, Professor, I didn’t expect to come back here and find there’d been a death in the house.”
“Neither did I,” he retorted. “Do you have any idea how Mrs. Ames might have got hold of a key?”
“If you think she got it from me, you’ve got another think coming. I wouldn’t have given that woman the time of day, always running the roads and laying d
own the law to everybody with dust on her furniture so thick you could write your name in it anywhere you’d a mind to. Not but what she was an upstanding, civic-minded woman,” the housekeeper added hastily, mindful that it was rude to speak ill of the demised. “Did a lot for the college, you can’t deny that.”
“Ah,” said the professor. “There you—er—strike at the heart of the matter. As you so rightly point out, Mrs. Ames was a woman of certain abilities, but she lacked your talents as a—er—homemaker. That fact has created a most unfortunate situation.”
“Oh?” Mrs. Lomax perked up her ears.
“Young Jemmy—er—the daughter—”
“I know Jemmy Ames, for heaven’s sake. She was in my Bluebirds.”
“Well, then,” Shandy beamed, “you’re the very person to solve the problem. You see, Professor Ames has flown out to be with Jemmy during her—er—impending confinement and a lady who is a connection of Jemmy’s husband has come to—er—help out. I brought her from the airport a while back,” he added with a touch of complacency.
“Do tell! You mean she’s traveled all the way from—”
“California. I was hoping to introduce you to Miss Marsh, but you—er—weren’t around.”
“You needn’t rub it in. I know I’m late. Got home around noontime and found a busted pipe under my kitchen sink. Couldn’t expect me to leave before the plumber got there, could you?”
“Er—no, of course not. And—er—plumbers being what they are—”
“I could tell you a thing or two about plumbers, Professor.”
Mrs. Lomax seemed disposed to do so, but Shandy knew from experience that it was folly not to head her off.
“So, Mrs. Lomax, the lady is now over at the Ames place trying, as she puts it, to blast a channel. Perhaps you could go over and—er—lend a hand.”
“You mean right now?”
“That was the general idea.”
“What makes you think I want to take on another job?”
“That’s for you to decide, of course. I was merely equating the need with your—er—exceptional qualifications. You might cut down on the time you spend here if you find the work load too heavy. But one cannot expect a woman like her to live in a mess like that.”
Rest You Merry Page 8
